Why James Harden doesn’t start

I’ll be honest: It’s taken me a while to come around on this discussion. I was never against James Harden starting, but I was never necessarily for it either.

I always sort of just sided with as long as Harden gets the bulk of the time at shooting guard and played 30 minutes, I’m good. And that’s been the case for a lot of the season, especially since the All-Star break. He’s played his minutes, been productive off the bench and done his job. What’s the big problem?

But against Memphis, things became a bit more clear. Game 7 said it all — OKC beat Memphis 70-49 with Harden on the floor and lost 41-35 without him. The reason? The Grizzlies defense could key entirely on Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant, stick O.J. Mayo on Westbrook and leave Mike Conley on Thabo. Not only that, but Marc Gasol even shaded over Durant most of the time because Kendrick Perkins is such a non-threat.

Really, the Thunder’s offense came down to Durant getting open coming off a screen, Westbrook having to create himself something or something for someone else, or Serge Ibaka scoring on a putback.

And you know that clever pick-and-roll the Thunder ran time after time against the Grizzlies in Game 7? That only works with Harden on the floor because Memphis was afraid to leave him alone. With Thabo, the Grizzlies can shade everything towards the pick-and-roll and forget about the weakside.

For the series, Harden was a +30 and Thabo was a -16. After Memphis made the adjustment to start Mayo and have him guard Westbrook in Game 5, Harden was a +48 to Thabo’s -23.

And the Mavericks are going to employ a similar strategy to protect Jason Kidd who will struggle staying in front of Westbrook. DeShawn Stevenson will start on Westbrook, leaving Kidd on Thabo. Again, more reason to have Harden start. It’s the same story all over again.

So with all that said, how does it make any sense not to start Harden? A lot of teams — Dallas being one — bring scorers off the bench. Rotationally, it just makes sense for some. Manu Ginobili did it in San Antonio for a long time. Because of a number of factors, having that bench punch is a good thing.

And it is. Having Harden to come off the bench and provide an offensive spark is a very good thing. But I think we can agree the starting five is one reason OKC lost Game 6 too. So why doesn’t Harden start? Scott Brooks isn’t dumb. He sees what we’re all seeing. Why doesn’t he make an adjustment?

I think your answer can be found in this quote from KD after the Thunder’s Game 7 win over Memphis.

“We came in to practice the same way, did the same things as always,” he said. “We just want to play our game and whatever happens, happens.”

The team repeats that phrase — “Just play our game” — almost ad nauseum. But they believe in that. They believe in what they have is good enough to win. The way every player talks, they’ve all bought in to “This is who we are and let’s see if you can beat us.” If Brooks went and started tinkering now, it would send quite a contradictory message.

This is the team the Thunder have had all year. Last season when they made a surprise run to the playoffs, Brooks started the same guys 82 times out of 88 games. This season, a couple of injuries and trades shook things up, but as long as his normal five were healthy, they started. There’s no playing with the first five, no adjusting there. That’s just who the Thunder are.

It’s stubbornness on behalf of Brooks, but that’s bullishness is part of what makes him good as a coach. His players love him for it and no matter what, he’s going to battle with the same troops every time.

They bring the same five, then stick to their rotation. Like in a critical Game 7, Brooks still stuck with his bench the usual amount to start the fourth. Now he adjusts at times mid-game, but as far as deviating from the gameplan in a big way, Brooks just doesn’t do that.

And like I said, it’s because the team has bought into it. They won 55 games and got to the Western Conference Finals just being who they are. While it might make sense to start Harden in terms of matchups and execution, Brooks doesn’t want to risk damaging the mental makeup of his group. And he’s right — at this point in the season, it’s stick with what got you here.

I’m a lot like Brooks. I’d hesitate to mess with a good thing. A playoff roster is a fragile thing and too much toying could upset something. And at this point, you probably don’t want to risk that, even if it makes a whole lot of sense to do it.

Obviously, the question will be asked again in training camp next year whether Harden should start. And that’s opportunity will be there for Brooks to do it. I kind of doubt he will though. The entire franchise is built around consistency and sticking to a plan. Brooks is sticking to his plan. Like it or not.

I completely understand the calls for Harden. I get how Thabo cripples our offense.

However, it's about more than either of them. Straight player swap, yup, Harden every time. However, bench play matters. Bench scoring looks bleak without him there. The natural adjustment to that is rearrange Russ' and KD's minutes during the second and third quarters so there is always somebody dangerous on the court. That's the adjustment Scott Brooks is likely wary of, not the straight swap. You have to rearrange those minutes to get anything consistently significant out of the bench, and maybe that's not a good idea to do mid playoffs. Not saying this is 100 percent perfect reasoning, just that the implications of swapping them right now is more than just replacing stats.

That said, if Harden isn't starting next year, I'd be very "ehhhh" about it. For now, Thabo starts and Harden gets the lionshare of the minutes. I'm fine with that, but I'll cringe with every Thabo brick.

There is an art to effectively sagging off someone faster than you. I am not an expert on that (was better playing defense inside) but Kidd probably knows how to do it as well as anyone.

How well he does will depend of lots of things- how much energy he has, how much contact Kidd makes and whether the officials call the fouls tight or not, how good the help is, clock management, whether Russ' mid-range or even long game is working, how much he forces the contact and how good he finishes or passes.

Joe-Nas :@Brew:+1 I think that the problem with Thabo is mainly because he’s missused. He’s not a 3pt shooter, let him get to the rim, cut towards the zone, even let him post up smaller defenders, etc…

“Let him get to the rim”. LOL. Nobody’s going to let Thabo get to the rim, they’re playing five feet off the guy. You make it sound like it’s easy. The point is that it’s difficult to run a coherent offensive set when you have no shooting on the court.

Run him towards the basket, force his man to follow, at worst, he will be around for rebound, putback, whatever. MOVEMENT. When Sef is active on offense, good things can happen.

Take0verRuss :Yo, Dters.. long time reader, (creeper?) 1st time posting. I know this is about the starting unit, but i wanted some thoughts on the crunchtime lineups. It seems that our ‘power lineup’ of RW-JH-KD-SI-Perk(or Collison) has a huge advantage over Kidd-Terry-Marion-Dirk-Chandler. In this scenario, who do they put Kidd on? Just seems like we should really exploit Kidd-Terry on defense when we have RW and Black Jesus together. Sorry if this has already been addressed.

Hay, welcome.

We'll have to wait n see what they do. I hear and think they will try to avoid Kidd on Westbrook for much of the game but Kidd may take him in crunch-time, for change of look (give Russell something new to deal with at the toughest time) and saving his efforts on him for the most crucial moments where his anticipation and decision-making might somewhat offset the speed / hops mismatch.

Joe-Nas :@Brew:+1 I think that the problem with Thabo is mainly because he’s missused. He’s not a 3pt shooter, let him get to the rim, cut towards the zone, even let him post up smaller defenders, etc…

I agree, the guys seem more then willing to get him the ball when he cuts. I put it on brooks for allowing early game isos.

At this point I'd just hope that Brooks is a bit flexible with "when" the starting unit gets adjusted in the 1st and 3rd quarters. He won't alter the 1st quarter starters and is very unlikely to even ever adjust the 3rd quarter starters. His call, for good or otherwise.

One point that I don't think has been brought up is that during the regular season, Harden didn't get enough run with the starters, and it made for some awkward periods when Harden didn't know how to fit it. He has worked through it, but by not starting during the regular season, he can't build the necessary chemistry. He has been building the chemistry but I think it could have been better if he had been starting since the allstar break.Also, all this stuff about the need to bring a good scorer off the bench is silly. Hopefully a team has 3-4 good scorers, if the top 3 can carry the team then you can bring the 4th off the bench. If you play your best players then you just stagger when they are on the bench. You almost never see 4 bench players playing at the same time, unless the team is really deep. But in our case, only our top 2 scorers are starting and the starters can't win without the points from Harden. If it was starters vs starters we would barely make the playoffs with our starting unit. The thunder have to get Harden going at some point in every game in order to win. If harden is more productive starting than coming off the bench, the answer to which I can't answer, then he should be starting, if not he should stay on the bench. But he needs more time during the regular season with the starters during the game.

Joe-Nas :@Brew:+1 I think that the problem with Thabo is mainly because he’s missused. He’s not a 3pt shooter, let him get to the rim, cut towards the zone, even let him post up smaller defenders, etc…

"Let him get to the rim". LOL. Nobody's going to let Thabo get to the rim, they're playing five feet off the guy. You make it sound like it's easy. The point is that it's difficult to run a coherent offensive set when you have no shooting on the court.

I think with Nick his effectiveness is enhanced by playing against subs. With Nick it is more about total minutes than starting. Whether he is in to close games is a pretty important decision. I'd have him in much of the time.

Starting Nick is something I might consider if they fell to a 2 game deficit but I doubt Brooks would.

lol @ starting cook! As soon as he has to do something different than catching and shooting its over! Watch what he did in G7...I'm with Joel, John and Co, apparently there must be something/someone to hate on your beloved team... smh...

More movement at the beginning would help, IMO. Sef can be dangerous slashing, moving, and taking his defender with him. If he's only going to play 15-20, get your ass tired running around on offense too. Sef shouldn't just post up on the corner 3, waiting to take a shot they are more then willing to give. Move baby, move, grab an early back door throw down son!

after Serge had a huge game against DEN, why has he been so quiet? and our discussions of him have been pretty quiet too as a way to help shore up some of the weak starting offensive spread. I think it was the Pruiti article on the bolts today that talked about him being a key to us breaking DAL’s zone a bit.

Tough matchups for him against Memphis, and he is still not very consistent.

Thabo was terrific for the team when the team had no idea how to play defense and he was the team's best defensive player. This is no longer the case, and his utility as a defensive specialist is (IMO) not really needed at all anymore in the starting unit which suffers from lack of floor balance, not for lack of defense.

Of all afternoons I actually had to work and Royce posted my favorite subject...I believe that if Thabo plays AT ALL in this series, the Thunder are at a disadvantage. He simply does not add anything right now. A Harden/Cook combo is our better play...

I wish I had more time to read the posts from earlier and see what everyone said. I will later...

Wow. I'm too late to this thread. A lot has been said already that I would like to have said, so I'll summarize my two cents.

1. I slightly disagree with Royce's statement that the numbers say that James Harden should start. More specifically, the numbers say that Thabo shouldn't play with our personnel. That isn't an indictment on Thabo. He is a player with a unique skill set. It just so happens that his value and his fit on this team has changed with the personnel, and that new fit isn't good for the team overall. He'd be a better fit with different personnel. It's difficult to find any 5 man lineup data where Thabo is a preferred player. It hasn't always been that way, but again, personnel has changed a lot since Thabo arrived.

2. It's fine to doubt Brook's decisions. The whole "LOL He's a coach and you're not so he's always right" argument is what is called an illogical fallacy. It is entirely possible that both are correct, or both incorrect.

There is no real right or wrong answers, but the numbers say that Brooks is making decisions on criteria other than +/-. Maybe it's an internal advanced metric. Maybe it's just old school philosophy.

Just because Brook's decisions are currently resulting in wins doesn't mean they are the best decisions. Just because you won a race running on 7 good cylinders doesn't mean you wouldn't have done better if you were running on all 8.

Brooks and his staff have done a great job at helping players develop and not overloading them with complexities and trying to maximize the player's strengths. They have done a great job at building the confidence of their players, and the players play hard for him. That is a large measure of success.

If we want to judge his decisions, and we know for a fact that he uses lineup data or +/- or some other advanced metric, then we could easily point out his poor decisions. Or if we know for a fact that those measurements are not considered at all, then we can easily point out that fallacy. But there is no ultimate correct or incorrect judgement on his strategies one way or the other until all the factors are known.

But that certainly does not exclude him from criticism whatsoever. Especially when his decisions go in a direction opposite of success, from a statistical perspective.

I don't care who we start, I just prefer not gifting the opposing team a ten point lead every first quarter. We're kind of playing with fire, and against better teams, it's more dangerous. We got lucky a bit against Memphis, but against Dallas, if they get a ten point cushion every game, we're going to be in a lot of trouble.

If Thabo's defense is good enough this series to prevent that from happening, I'm cool with it, but I don't really see who he's going to be guarding to do that. I like Thabo, a lot, but it's just hard to watch the starting lineup right now and feel good about it.

Yo, Dters.. long time reader, (creeper?) 1st time posting. I know this is about the starting unit, but i wanted some thoughts on the crunchtime lineups. It seems that our 'power lineup' of RW-JH-KD-SI-Perk(or Collison) has a huge advantage over Kidd-Terry-Marion-Dirk-Chandler. In this scenario, who do they put Kidd on? Just seems like we should really exploit Kidd-Terry on defense when we have RW and Black Jesus together. Sorry if this has already been addressed.

I don't think we'd see Cook start, it'd either be thabo or Harden. It seems like Brooks is pretty big on the loyalty front. For him to decide to make a change and start Cook instead of Harden would go against that.

Okay, I tried to read through all the comments before posting, so forgive me if someone has already said this (you guys rarely leave out any argument I have for anything), but what I don't think is being finessed enough are the individual match-ups. I am a staunch Thabo apologist, and EVEN I didn't think he should have started games 3-7 of the Memphis series! The particular bang and grind inside offense that the Grizzlies employ DOES make Thabo on-ball wing defense nearly obsolete. I totally agree that having him and Perkins in the game together makes us painfully vulnerable to double-teams on Durant AND Westbrook.

But we will not see the Memphis Grizzlies again (this playoffs)and I think there are a lot of you here that are going to be eating some crow about Thabo by the end of this series. I think he will be great on Jason Kidd (who is a very dangerous and nasty old man) and I think he might do as well in stretches on Dirk as anyone not named Serge Ibaka. Harden is progressing remarkably fast, and he is a solid defender, but he goes to sleep on defense sometimes, and still makes bone-headed mistakes too, I am afraid that Dallas is going to expose our technical weaknesses worse than Memphis or Denver, because they play such a surgical inside-outside game.

I'm not with this, "he's an NBA coach so he's gotta know what he's doing" stuff. A) Mo Cheeks' record as a head coach is pretty saddening (only two winning seasons out of 8 i believe. Both first round exits), so to say "You don't know more than our whole coaching staff".. watch yourself and B) It's not like most of the claims are just random speculation. Yes numbers lie sometimes, but almost every argument on here is supposrted by a pretty large sample of stats. It's not necessarily being negative just because you oppose something the team does. It's just being objective and an intelligent basketball fan.

I know it'll never happen, but I'd love to start Cook this series. It would space the floor so much on offense to start the games. And on defense, we can hide him on Stevenson. Then Harden can still anchor the bench and be that scoring punch. For this series, we can shorten the bench and stagger the rotations. Find Thabo 10 minutes of playing time somewhere. Yeah, it's not gonna happen, but I think it'd be a great idea.

I get the whole, "If it ain't broke thing", but really, isn't it kind of broke? We have to routinely start off each game behind, KD and Russ have a hard time finding a rhythm, the tone is set, the away crowd can get into it, etc, etc.. I'd love to be able to start off by punching someone in the mouth and getting their crowd out of it. I just think we're playing with fire by almost just hoping "Please keep it within 5 or so" with the starters out there and then hoping to make a run when Thabo comes out.

I don't buy that inertia is a justifiable reason to keep Harden on the bench. The Jeff Green trade didn't worsen this team and the starting lineup is a losing one for this team. The Spurs and Mavs do not get outscored when they have Terry or Ginobli coming off the bench and both have shown a willingness to make proactive and frequent changes to their lineups if they see a problem.

Also, I think the effect on Harden shouldn't be understated. There are times this season when he struggled with his confidence and I think the way Brooks relegates him to the bench and manages his minutes is probably contributing to it.

Also, the starting lineup is getting outscored whenever they play together. "Playing their game" is clearly not working with this unit and I struggle to see a scenario where the whole team collapses with one change to the starting lineup. Were such a scenario to occur, it seems like a much greater indictment of the coach than of the decision to change the lineup.

I like all the chatter that goes on here, it is what makes the site as great as it is. Its funny thought, If fans of 26 other teams read our board I bet it would drive them crazy. "they are in the WCF and complaining about who is starting at SG??" hahaha we are a little spoiled arent we?

Joel :When I was in the navy, we had a saying “A happy sailor is a bitching sailor.” It’s when they stopped talking was when you had to worry about’em. That’s what you guys are, right now – bitching sailors. “Yous guys” aren’t happy unless you’re bitching about one point or another. Bah! I say. We’re in the freaking WCF, I’m gonna enjoy the ride.

Well looks like the Mavs are gonna put their Thabo (Stevenson) on Russ and have Kidd on Thabo. So unless Thabo guards Dirk or maybe Kidd, he's gonna be useless on both ends of the court instead of just one.....

I think one of the reasons why we saw Nick play so much more than Ibaka was because the ankle is bothering Ibaka more than we thought it did and that Nick's play has been superb lately so we havn't paid much attention to Ibaka's ankle.

That's a great video! If you haven't watched it, you really should. "Russell Westbrook: Past, Present and Future". My favorite part was Garnett and Pierce freaking out about Russ scoring 40 in the Rookie/Soph All Star game.

I feel like the debate between the Morning Woods (start with a Harden) and the stick with Sef groups has become "Harden is better, just watch or look at the stats vs "we won 55 games, are in the WCF, dont change anything, and our couch gets paid for a reason." Really dont see either one of these sides convincing the other until we have either lost a series or won the championship... I think I am gonna wait till then to join a side.

When I was in the navy, we had a saying "A happy sailor is a bitching sailor." It's when they stopped talking was when you had to worry about'em. That's what you guys are, right now - bitching sailors. "Yous guys" aren't happy unless you're bitching about one point or another. Bah! I say. We're in the freaking WCF, I'm gonna enjoy the ride.

If we are going to win this series we are going to have to make some major changes in my opinion. The Mavs have to many weapons and shoot the ball really well from deep. Is Brooks up for the challenge. Our lineups are going to have to be switched around case by case and we are going to have to use our length instead of over helping. We are going to have to guard that 3 point line like we never had before. I think we are up for the challenge go Thunder!

@justinafter Serge had a huge game against DEN, why has he been so quiet? and our discussions of him have been pretty quiet too as a way to help shore up some of the weak starting offensive spread. I think it was the Pruiti article on the bolts today that talked about him being a key to us breaking DAL's zone a bit.

@justinbut he's a better passer and on ball defender with a better overall BB IQ. I think you could make an argument to start him over Serge, especially in light of Serge's performance last series. I don't think he should, mind you. Just sorta being a devil's advocate.

Joel :Didn’t we all say the attention would shift to Thabo when Jeff left for the C’s.. Here it is. Let’s pick out the next topic of convo when Thabo is relegated to bench play and/or traded. My guess would be……. Perkins lack of an offensive game that’s hindering us from greatness.

It’s not really picking on Thabo. Perkins and Ibaka are as much a problem offensively as Thabo. It’s the combination that does not work. But Perkins and Ibaka do a whole lot more on the defensive end – impact defenders on the front line are far more valuable than in the backcourt.

Joel :Didn’t we all say the attention would shift to Thabo when Jeff left for the C’s.. Here it is. Let’s pick out the next topic of convo when Thabo is relegated to bench play and/or traded. My guess would be……. Perkins lack of an offensive game that’s hindering us from greatness.

It's not really picking on Thabo. Perkins and Ibaka are as much a problem offensively as Thabo. It's the combination that does not work. But Perkins and Ibaka do a whole lot more on the defensive end - impact defenders on the front line are far more valuable than in the backcourt.